Customer Reviews

Man and Camel: Poems

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mark Strand writes less poetry than almost any published poet in America today, and that is a good thing, because when Strand publishes a poem, one knows that it has been fastidiously conceived and revised. The result, poetry that is thoughtful and compelling, appealing to both intellect and intuition. This latest collection contains some of Strand's most humorous poetry, and some of his most disturbing. Yet the poetry in here represents not so much a departure from previous Strand as a continuing evolution. One is inclined to say he keeps getting better.

Mark Strand's Man and Camel is an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book of contemporary poetry. From the unforgettable opening poem of the melancholy king who has lost his desire to rule to the closing, wrenching meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, set to Haydn's Quartet Opus 51, Strand is numenous and feeling. It is hard to pick favorite poems; each is a polished gem, but here is just one line that took my breath away: "Then I went to the window/and a river of old people with canes and flashlights/were inching their way down through the dark to the sea." This is a great, powerful book by a great, powerful poet.

The one quality that I haven't seen mentioned about this book yet is that as a reader it is as easy as possible to fall into the book from the first poem. I was sitting in the back of a bookstore while my daughter played with some toys there. From the first line of the first poem I was pulled in. I didn't even think about stopping. I tried the second poem. Same thing. And the third. I was thirty pages in before I noticed that we were late for dinner.

Does it matter that the poetry is immediately engaging? Yes. Immediate engagement is a fantastic first step. I've only read those thirty pages or so once, but my guess is that as I go back to them they will become more interesting, not less.

I'm reminded, in reading this, of "Eating Poetry" which is what I want to do with this book, the way I would dive into a slice of New York pizza or a perfectly cooked cheeseburger. Delicious.

Strand is a magnificent poet. His ideas and images are brilliant and the arrangement of the poems makes one flow into the other and it is impossible to stop reading. Tight and concise, lyrical and thought provoking, interesting and entertaining. He won a well-deserved Pulitzer a few years ago, and these poems are additional evidence as to why.

Favorites include "Black Sea," "Marsyas," "Mother and Son," and "Mirror."

Mark Strand, <strong>Man and Camel</strong> (Knopf, 2006)

I let my review of this go too long, and it ended up going back to the library without my pulling quotes to illustrate my points, so this is going to be a very short review.

I've read a few of Strand's books before, and never really quite figured out what it is about his work that everyone goes on about. I once submitted some stuff to a magazine, and when I got a reply, they'd taken everything except one poem which they labeled as being "too personal" for their readership. (I still have no idea why, since it was a cut-up/fold-in thing that had as little of the personal about it as I could manage!) I often get that feeling while reading Strand, whether it's the forty-year-old poems in <em>Darker</em> or the more recent stuff in <em>Man and Camel</em>, and this is one of those places where I wish I still had the book in front of me to pull quotes; there's a poem about seeing a woman, and knowing her, or thinking you know her, and it seems to end about three lines before everything comes together. On the other hand, this book did bring me the closest I think I've come to figuring it out, in the long poem towards the back, where I felt at least three or four times that whatever bones Strand had fleshed out to make this poem (many of which were religious, and not a few secular) were close enough to the surface to make out their shapes, and not coincidentally that was my favorite poem here.

If you're already a fan, you're pretty much guaranteed to like what you find. If you're not yet, this is the best of Strand's books that I've read so far. ***

Mr. Strand writes poems that are brief and books that are brief. What Mr. Strand lacks in length, however, he makes up for in power. "A Piece of the Storm," an eleven line work from his last collection, Blizzard of One, is one of the best poems of the last 10 years. I was hoping to find something of that level in this collection and I did.

"2002" is another top tier poem. It is a meditation on death but with a twist. It begins: "I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me./He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokes/his beard, and says, `I'm thinking of Strand...'". Normally, I find a poet using his own name in a poem incredibly narcissistic, but here it gives grounding to a poem of fantasy. Plus, it seems to invite the reader to substitute their own name. From there, the poem follows Death's thoughts until it reaches this chilling closing: "...O let it be soon. Let it be soon." I love it.

As is often the case, even with poets I enjoy, the rest of the book is uneven. There are some other jewels here, including "Mother and Son" and "Poem After the Seven Last Words," a sequence of stanzas built around the last words of Christ on the Cross. What I like about this poem is how there is a subtlety and universality about it. Still, some of the poems are quite poor, including "2032," the companion to "2002." But I am will to work my way through some poems I don't like to find something like "2002."

This was my first experience reading a full collection by Mark Strand but I am very impressed, which shouldn't be surprising giving the awards and honors that Strand has received.

To me, this collection is full of poems that are the narrator trying to find his place in the world. There are many poems that look into what it is to be a writer, but that is not the only place in the world that the narrator is looking for.

What I note the most in these poems, as a poet, is the great use of dialogue and strong use of the actual line.

This collection could have a wide audience and hope many will consider reading it!.

This is the eleventh poetry collection by Mark Strand and provides light masterpieces of spiritual meditations and social conditions. Poems are all free verse and vary immensely in theme and approach - but all are hard-hitting comments: "Something was wrong/screams could be heard/in the morning dark/it was cold." Mark Strand's reflections always make you think: MAN AND CAMEL is no exception.